Eleven-year-old Vidya clearly remembers the last time she ate a midday meal at school. It was three months ago, the day school authorities discovered a lizard in the food. "She carries her own lunch ever since. On days she doesn't, I give her lunch money to eat chole-kulche outside school," her mother Sangeeta Devi says. Sangeeta Devi isn't the only parent refraining her child from eating midday meals. NGO Lakshya, which surveyed 2,000 families in Trilokpuri in the last two months, found that nearly 80 per cent of them were reluctant to allow their children to eat midday meals served in civic and municipal schools. And nearly all families believe that meals should be prepared in the school, instead of being outsourced, to maintain better standards and quality.